Cooley Dickinson Hospital increasing single-bed rooms

File photo / The RepublicanThe North Building and Kittredge Surgery Center at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton.NORTHAMPTON – Beginning next month, Cooley Dickinson Hospital will be providing single rooms for nearly everyone receiving inpatient care.
The hospital cited enhanced privacy and confidentiality, more comfort for a patient’s family members, nurses being able to focus more on individual care, and better infection control in making the switch.
Chief nursing officer Leesa-Lee Keith said Thursday the move adding more single rooms will begin next week, and it is expected to be completed by the first week of June.
“We will incrementally bring this into place over four weeks,” Keith said.
Keith said the switch will not require any physical changes to the hospital, that space is already available.
“We haven’t had to do construction,” she said. “We haven’t had to alter anything.”
On average, the hospital has 70 patients receiving inpatient care each day.
In Springfield, construction is under way for an expansion of Baystate Medical Center that will include 126 new single-patient rooms. Jane Albert, director of public affairs and community relations for Baystate Health, said national standards now require all single-patient rooms in new hospital construction.
Keith said anyone coming to the emergency room at Cooley Dickinson is screened for the methicillin-resistant staph aureus infection – called MRSA – and that prior to being admitted into the hospital, a patient has had to wait for lab results. If the test came back negative, the patient would go to a room with two beds, while a positive result would mean admission to a room with one bed.
With the impending change at Cooley Dickinson, there will no longer be need for a wait, which Keith said will improve the flow of patients through the emergency room.
“We don’t have to wait for lab results to come back,” Keith said.
Keith also said Cooley Dickinson will have two double-occupancy rooms in its Joint Replacement Center. Medical research has shown that patients who have had a hip or knee replacement are aided in their recoveries by being with someone who has also undergone such an operation.